After roles in Pride and
Prejudice andBridget Jones's Diary, Colin
Firth was transformed
in a reluctant sex symbol.But, as his latest movie reaches
Britain,he tells John Hiscock he is notthe romantic type at all

It was a big night
in Los Angeles.
Paul McCartney was in town to begin his concert tour, the new Star
Wars
film was being screened to a VIP audience and Tom Hanks and Martin
Short
were at the Geffen Theatre in a one-night-only performance of A
Midsummer
Night's Dream.

Colin Firth's
latest leading-man
role is in The Importance of Being Earnest, which has been
panned
by US critics

Yet the Los
Angeles Times
elected to focus its social diary on the phenomenon of the ardent
female
fans who had lined up to attend a Bafta-sponsored question-and-answer
session
with Colin Firth. Several women were following him, groupie-like,
across
America, reported the newspaper, which carried gushing quotes from them
along the lines of "Colin is the man of my dreams."

The British actor
became
a transatlantic symbol of romance and sexuality with his portrayal of
the
brooding, glowering Mr Darcy in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and
Prejudice. In reality, he is humorous, self-effacing and slightly
sheepish
about finding himself portrayed as the object of American women's
fantasies.

"Sometimes, I get
an almost
ludicrous level of respect," he says ruefully. "But, if people expect
me
to be Mr Darcy, they are going to be disappointed." And—another blow to
his fans—"I don't think I'm an excessively romantic guy. Romantic
clichés
don't appeal to me and I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day. I think
romance
can be a bit facile."

That is not to
downplay the
effect of the Darcy role on his life and career. "I was 35 when I did Pride
and Prejudice, and I thought that romantic, leading-man roles were
passing out of my scope," he says with a laugh. "It was time for me to
do character roles and joyfully get fat, so the reaction to Mr Darcy
took
me very much by surprise.

"It put the
romantic, leading-man
character back on the agenda for me in terms of the sort of work that
is
coming my way. It's come back in a way I would never have expected. I
don't
know what would have happened without Mr Darcy." But he hastens to
correct
any false impression: "Things were going all right beforehand. It's not
as if I was struggling and suddenly found a life."

Although he has
been heralded
as one of the best British actors of his generation, it was not until Pride
and Prejudice that his film career took off. He has since appeared
in The English Patient, Bridget Jones's Diary and Shakespeare
in Love.

He was in America
to publicise
his latest role as Jack Worthing in director Oliver Parker's quirky
version
of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which also
stars
Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Rupert Everett as Algy Moncrieff, Frances
O'Connor as Gwendolen Fairfax and Reese Witherspoon as Cecily Cardew.

We meet in a Los
Angeles
hotel the morning after his Bafta appearance. Dressed casually in
jeans,
white trainers and a dark crew-necked sweater, he is more easily
identifiable
with the Arsenal-loving soccer fan he portrayed in the film of Nick
Hornby's
book Fever Pitch than Mr Darcy.

He lives in
London with his
wife, Livia, an Italian film-maker whom he met in 1996, while they were
both working on the film Nostromo. They were married in June
1997
and have a son, Luca, who was born in Rome last year.

Firth's most
serious romantic
involvements—and he insists they are very few—have been with his
leading
ladies. He has a 12-year-old son, William, from a five-year
relationship
with actress Meg Tilly, whom he met on the set of Valmont, and
he
had a brief relationship with actress Jennifer Ehle which began while
they
were filming Pride and Prejudice.

He is, he
believes, a better
father now than he was when his first child was born. "I was 30 and I
still
felt far too young for anything like that," he says. "I hadn't quite
got
over not being 18 any more, and having a child changed my life
dramatically.
This time, I feel a little more equipped for it."

Professionally,
he finds
himself having to defend The Importance of Being Earnest in the
face of harsh criticism. Exception has been taken to Oliver Parker's
revisionist
version of Wilde's play, which includes fantasies, flashbacks, a
hot-air
balloon and a tattooed Gwendolen. Daily Variety described it as
"utterly miscalculated", generating the "queasy feeling of
desperation".
The
Hollywood Reporter thought it "feeble", and said Parker's
film-making
choices "continually disrupt the delicate process of Wilde's comic
writing".

Firth is stoutly
supportive
of his director, seeing in Parker's version a freshness and originality
often lacking in the more traditional stage productions.

"The play has
been done endlessly,"
he says, "and for someone to take it and be impertinent with it is not
only an interesting experiment but entirely consistent with the spirit
of the original. Oscar Wilde was in the business of disturbing
complacencies
and creating upsets and upheavals.

"Somebody once
said to Wilde
that this play should be like a wonderful mosaic, and he said no, it
should
go off like a pistol shot. I have seen probably 30 productions on the
stage,
and I have never seen one which has done that. Obviously, I'm a bit
partisan,
but this was an attempt to free it from the dangers of fossilisation."

He says it is the
quality
of the writing that inspires him. "There is nothing more intoxicating
for
an actor and nothing sets you on fire more than good language. The text
is where it all starts. It is our job to interpret it, so, when the
language
vibrates, if you get it right, you catch fire. It fires up your
intellect
and even your body is affected by it. It is a very visceral experience."

Firth
is full of praise for Reese Witherspoon, the only American in the Earnest
cast. "It may be shocking to some people, but a lot of the American
actors
I've worked with are far more disciplined than Judi Dench," he says
with
a laugh. "Judi has a terrible sense of mischief, and sometimes you're
lucky
to get beyond three lines of dialogue without her cracking up with
laughter.
Of course, she's very sure of her own discipline, which is why she's
free
to have fun. But I found that American actors are intensely disciplined
and extremely hard-working."

He claims his
greatest handicap
as an actor has always been his name. "Names are important; it's a huge
part of who you are. Colin is the sort of name you give your goldfish
for
a joke. I was watching an episode of Blackadder, and there was
a
dachshund called Colin, and just his name was supposed to reduce you to
fits of laughter. It has the double disadvantage of being considered
commonplace,
dreary and banal and, at the same time, not common at all. So I have
this
commonplace, dreary, banal name, but there is nobody else to share my
fate.
There are very few Colins around."

Oddly enough, he
plays a
character named Colin in his next film, Hope Springs, in which
he
stars with Minnie Driver and Heather Graham. But this Colin is a
romantic
figure. Quite unlike the actor playing him.